DJ Quik has been through some tough times in his life, but nothing compares to having a near-death experience over a bootlegged copy of 2Pac's album.
On Tuesday, August 29, Talib Kweli posted another episode of his People's Party podcast featuring Quik as his guest. Midway through their conversation, the veteran DJ and artist told the story of how he was almost murdered in the mid '90s after a copy of 2Pac's All Eyez On Me found its way out of his possession and in the streets of L.A. Quik said it all started when his security guard swiped the unreleased CD from his car.
WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
““I almost got killed over a 2Pac bootleg!" Quik exclaimed. "I had a machine gun put in my face!”
"It was in my car and my security at the time used my car," he explained. "He took the CD out and let his homeboys hear it. ‘Man, let me get a copy of that!’ ‘Cool’ So I’m in the studio, proofreading and listening to these mixes, making sure that they sound good. And I would give Suge [Knight] a CD or ‘Pac a CD. The CD ended up in the neighborhood at Earthquake Sounds, a car shop or whatever. And dudes up there called Suge and was like, ‘Aye man, you know n****s up here playing the new 2Pac s**t y’all working on?’ He’s like, ‘What?!’
“So I get a call, ‘Hey man, come up to the office.’ And I already know what them Death Row meetings, when they call you randomly at like 4:20. ‘Aye, fight traffic, get up here.’ I’m like, ‘Aww, this finna be some bulls**t,'" he continued. “We get up there and we confront it, and then a fight started in the f**king Death Row [office]. It was scrapping and s**t. After the fight was done, my dumb-ass, I’m like, ‘Man, we just got accused of something we didn’t do!’ I’m like, ‘What did you do? Who did you give the CD to?’ [He’s like], ‘This guy.'”
From there, DJ Quik and his crew pulled up on the real leaker at his home. That's when another fight broke out. The man Quik fought eventually pulled a TEC gun on him. The Compton native said he was prepared for whatever came next. Fortunately for him, Quik's security grabbed his opponent's gun before any shots could be fired. Once the gun was taken out of the equation, Quik said he proceeded to get pummeled by the true offender. He also revealed that he ended up reconciling with his attacker years later.
“The guy that supposedly did it, I ended up making amends with him," Quik explained. "I went and hung out with him a couple of years ago and apologized because I shouldn’t have did that. You know, Death Row was the single most dangerous record company in the world, but if you had on the chain, nothing ever happened to you.”
Watch the entire conversation above.